Spinning Stars
by Sara Darkotter
Summary: Because one day stars would spin comet-like and the sun would race a blinding streak across the sky as he stepped back from his body but until then the stars crept slow and in them he saw her, her walk, her stance, and he loved her. Unrequited!love, Scorpius/Lily, Scorpius/Albus


I am the master at writing shit up two hours before it's due. PROCRASTINATION!

(Also schoolwork.)

No prompts were used, because I spent so long trying to figure out what the hell I was doing and by the time I figured that out the window had passed. Sadly.

I suppose it turned out pretty well, despite that complication.

* * *

Lily fascinated him.

She also scared him.

She didn't scare Scorpius with actions, she didn't jump from around corners and yell "BOO!" like Peeves catching a student sneaking, shaking, down the halls. She scared him with smiles, with comforting touch, with the feeling that churned his stomach and thoughts and left warmth in the center of his chest. She scared him.

But fascinated him. With how her eyes lit up when she talked about a particular subject or person or book and how he noticed in her and rarely anyone else; with the little ways she walked and flew and ran he hadn't noticed he'd memorized but had; the shine of her hair, the turn of her mouth, her skin and bones and the way she fit into them, onto them. She fascinated him, and this scared him too.

Beautiful, touchable, untouchable, a ruthless force of nature on par with the sea itself.

And Scorpius couldn't swim.

He smiled at her today in the library, just catching himself from breaching a line. No flirting, no flirting. He talks to her in the halls, asking about her day, holding back the lovers edge to the questions. He walks with her to one of her classes and nearly asks to hold her hand.

No flirting, no flirting.

There's simples reasons for this and the first is the friend he sits with at dinner, laughing too loudly to the ceiling. (The stars are bright tonight, among the candles)

Albus is his best friend, first friend, their dorms are right across from each other. They share classes, homework, alcohol, clothes, food, even that cigarette they smuggled to try it just once, to be the cool older kids. They're almost like lovers but it's not because they say it is, it just feels like how it's supposed to be.

But Albus was Lily's sister. Lily was the blood of this person his life had tangled with so that people whispered rumors about what they did in the dark, Lily was a person Albus defended and boosted up and Scorpius helped, Lily was the girl that Albus still looked at and sometimes saw a toddler helping him build mudcastles.

He couldn't love her.

And more than that...

He couldn't share her.

Scorpius had spent years sharing everything and now every day he passed the one thing he wanted more than life itself but couldn't. And if he couldn't share someone that he loved they wouldn't mean nearly as much because he had shared breath and blood and even spit laced with the buzz of firewhiskey. He wanted to share love.

(They shared a girl once. Scorpius remember her hands always felt soft and her laughter genuine and how it felt to lay his head on her lap while Albus leaned against her shoulder. But they were younger then. Love tasted different then.)

So he balanced against the line and watched it blur and sharpen and held his breath sometimes as she got so near until she faded back and left him empty in a little hollow of his chest that friends who shared everything didn't fill.

And waited. Because one day stars would spin comet-like and the sun would race a blinding streak across the sky as he stepped back from his body but until then the stars crept slow and in them he saw her, her walk, her stance, and he loved her. Time went by depending just how much you inhabited and the longer he waited the faster it got, the linear pieces and the bends of the universe becoming clearer, sections removed to keep laying path ahead and one single name that stretched all across his little bit pronounced Lily.

"But darling, when I die, tell me that you love me, write it on my tombstone," he whispered, and handed the warm mug to Albus, staring at the clear view all the way down to the horizon. Below him if he stared the tower swayed so he didn't, didn't think of his precarious balance on the edges of the word and decisions and instead watched stars.

Albus made a sound, an agreement, and the silence lapsed again, a shooting star streaked by and Scorpius made his wish, made his wish, made his wish. He knew he was doomed to love Lily until the feeling was gone but who was to say how long that was, and maybe he was doomed to forever.

The cup passed his lips again and he looked to the shore, hand finding Albus for balance and hot liquid and a weighing heart mixed in his stomach as he watched Lily Potter step out along the lake, hand in hand with a boy, and then fingers knotted in hair.

Lily fascinated him.

And Lily scared him.

He was fascinated with her unknowing grip and the shape to her soul and the pieces of her mind that fit to make it solely hers and no one else, he was drawn to the way that she laughed and screamed and yelled, to the way she played games and the way she played others.

He was scared, because once it couldn't be yours the mind and heart obsessed and picked and scabbed and twisted and more than he wanted to love her he did not want to ruin her, he wanted her. But the cost would be her.

(She smiled at him once from under a mistletoe, but then hour struck and the moment was gone.)

He turned his eyes upward, counting slow stars. "Al?"

"Sure, I'll kiss you."

And he lets the mug be taken from his hand.


End file.
